Developing oral skills through collaborative tasks in a group of pre-service english teachers

Abstract

Becoming an efficient English teacher requires developing a communicative capacity to express ideas with coherence, cohesion, and above all fluency both orally and in writing. Hence, the importance of the development of these communicative skills contributes to facilitating the language teaching process. Future foreign language teachers must develop effective speaking skills during their pre-service studies. Teacher educators, then, need to be aware of the importance of providing future language teachers with opportunities to develop these skills. This study aims to determine the extent to which the implementation of collaborative tasks promotes the development of speaking skills in a group of pre-service English teachers. This interpretivist action research was carried out in a public university in Valledupar (Colombia) with 12 students at the intermediate English level. Data was collected through the application, before and after the intervention, of two instruments: a survey and an observation process. The survey helped to identify information about the student's perspectives regarding the development of their speaking skills. While class observation was used to characterize the way, speaking was taught in the classroom. The finding showed that the implementation of collaborative speaking tasks affected positively students’ perceptions about the development of their speaking skills while the survey showed that, after the intervention, students were more motivated, more confident, and had a better self-perception of their oral capacity. Some areas like vocabulary development and the use of Spanish in class should be more deeply explored in classes in terms of the development of speaking.